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Patti Smith’s AGO performances tonight will reflect spirit of photos

The two AGO shows, presented in tandem with an exhibition of her black-and-white Polaroid photography, will feature accompaniment by her daughter Jesse and bassist/pianist Tony Shanahan, will be “quite simple.”

To declare that tickets to Patti Smith’s twin performances at the Art Gallery of Ontario this Thursday evening are “like gold” would be understating their scarcity.

Still, if you’re among the 800 fans who came out on top during the bloody scramble early last month for passes to An Evening of Words and Song with Patti Smith – two evenings in one, actually, since the legendary punk-rock poetess is presiding over separate shows at 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. in the AGO’s Walker Court tonight – you might as well already start gloating about the unique experience(s) awaiting you.

The two AGO shows, presented in tandem with an exhibition of her black-and-white Polaroid photography entitled Patti Smith: Camera Solo and featuring accompaniment by her daughter Jesse and bassist/pianist Tony Shanahan, will be “quite simple.”

But, she says, they will reflect the mood and the content and the knowingly haunted spirit of the photographic works on display in Toronto until May 19: 75 unadorned snaps of gravestones, sick beds, slippers and other trace belongings (“second- and third-class relics,” Smith calls them) linked to some of the departed fellow artists and writers Smith holds dear, from Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake to Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to Susan Sontag and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the latter of whom was a dear friend who featured prominently in Smith’s acclaimed 2010 memoir, Just Kids.

“I think (they) will resonate the show,” Smith said of the AGO performances while casually conducting interviews on Wednesday afternoon in the corner of the gallery that currently houses her work. “We’ll do material that relates somewhat to some of the photographs and to Robert and to Arthur Rimbaud, and we’ll get a sense of the vibe of the people and see what they want. The two shows will be different.”

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A third Toronto show scheduled for Saturday at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre will be a different experience altogether, coming as it does on the anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s death on March 9, 1989. That gig will see Smith’s son, Jackson, joining daughter Jesse and Shanahan on stage with her in tribute to her gone-but-forever-present BFF’s life and work.

Artist Patti Smith talks to the media at the opening of her photography show at the Art Gallery of Ontario. (Rene Johnston / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Patti Smith at the opening of her first visual-art exhibit in Canada, at the AGO, Wednesday. She'll perform two intimate concerts there Thursday evening. (Galit Rodan / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

A happy coincidence or a sad one?

“It’s a happy coincidence,” says Smith, noting that March 9th is also the date upon which she met her late husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith.

“No, it’s a good thing. I’ve done many memorial concerts. March 9th is a very bittersweet date for me. So when I do these concerts on March 9th, they both resonate, Fred and Robert.”

Patti Smith: Camera Solo runs until May 19th at the AGO. Smith will be signing copies of Just Kids at shopAGO from 12-2 p.m. on Thursday, and also appearing at a sold-out screening of the documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life on Friday night in Jackman Hall at the AGO.

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